COVID-19: Is this the end of globalization?

Lockdowns and border closures to manage the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have caused the greatest global economic shock since the Great Depression. Does this also signal the end of economic globalization, the most significant trend of the past forty years? And if so, what kind of global political economy is emerging from the wreckage? In this article, I argue that COVID-19 is mainly intensifying pre-existing trends, set in motion by the global financial crisis of 2008 and the People's Republic of China (PRC)'s economic rise. The disruptions to global supply chains wrought by COVID-19 have combined with rising United States–PRC rivalry, growing disaffection with the distributional impacts of global value chains, and automation to catalyze the turn away from globalized production. Meanwhile, amid the economic doom and gloom, financial markets are booming, high on the central banks' liquidity injections to which they have been addicted since the 2008 crisis. As in the decade since the 2008 crisis, booming markets will likely deepen inequality and resentment, fuelling economic nationalism and eroding support for globalization even more. The governments of relatively small and open economies, such as Australia and Canada, will need to guide their economies more purposefully or find themselves at the mercy of the increasingly confrontational, yet domestically fragile, United States and the PRC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]